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Emptied of human presence, the imaginary spaces of my paintings are nevertheless functional, bearing the trace signs of human activity and habitation. They are the architecture and interiors that form the material world of our everyday and are formative in the way we negotiate it. Any sense of the human is felt through its absence, and questions about what these spaces are for, and who uses them, are deliberately left open.

Inspired by early Renaissance devotional painting and later cabinet pictures, these paintings are designed for intimate settings and a small audience. Painting as an object is an important consideration with the frame forming part of the composition, extending the pictorial space into three dimensions. Overall, I look to prioritise the viewer's engagement with the subject, which is architecture as a psychological space.

To this end, the 18th-century printmaker Giovanni Battista Piranesi and the 15th-century Sienese painter Sassetta are specific influences. Piranesi's series of etchings, the Carceri d'invenzione (imaginary prisons), with their subterranean vaults and stairs, create dark, psychologically charged spaces. Of Sassetta's Saint Francis and the Poor Knight in the National Gallery, London, Bernard Berenson wrote that "the Sienese plunges you into a visionary world, with his keep in the clouds," architecture given over to the imagination rather than to structure.

Egg tempera painting aligns itself with my concerns. The preparation and execution of tempera paintings leave no room for painterly gesture or spontaneity, and the process lends itself to the development of imaginary three-dimensional architectural spaces. Complete drawings, usually in a two-point perspective like an architect's mock-ups, are transferred onto gesso panels. Multiple layers of thin paint are then methodically applied until the characteristic matt sheen of tempera paintings is achieved. This method suits my ambition to make concrete the fears and re-alignments of dreamlike states of mind.

Biographical Note

Mathew Gibson was born in Acton, London, in 1962. He studied at Norwich School of Art (BA Hons Fine Art, 1987–90) and at Kent Institute of Art & Design (Interdisciplinary MA in Art & Architecture, 1990–91). From 2006–07 he was Professor of Foundation Studies at SCAD, Savannah, USA, and from 2011 to 2022 resident artist at Colart, owners of Winsor & Newton. Since 2022 he has been co-founder of Contemporary Art Academy. He lives and works in London.